Zoltan shook his head. "You go to great lengths for a joke, Illya. I think you put yourself in unnecessary danger."
Illya shrugged. "My sense of humor will be the death of me yet."
Footsteps rattled on the steps above them, and Napoleon asked quickly, "How did you get up here? Can we get out?"
"The lift-conveyor opens out for a ways. It can be climbed. Come on." As they ducked down the corridor and then to the left, Illya said, "I blew out a circuit breaker by shorting one of the light sockets. I had hoped to do something to their power generator system, but apparently it didn't work. In here." He pointed to an area darker than most of the wall. Napoleon put out an exploratory hand and found it to be an opening.
They boosted Hilda through and Zoltan followed her, then Napoleon and Illya.
"Climb fast," the Russian whispered as pounding feet hit the bottom of the stairs and started down the corridor. They pulled themselves up the steps of the steeply slanting belt and hung there, waiting. The footsteps hurried past, and Napoleon hissed, "Keep climbing!"
They did. They climbed in total darkness until their arms ached, but as they climbed Napoleon explained, "This conveyor was being used to hoist the boxes to wherever the helicopter took off from. If we can get there, we'll be right at the heart of the whole operation. Illya, do you feel up to repeating your performance so soon? It'll be a fresh audience."
"I doubt if the second show will get quite the same raves. Remember, I spent five minutes warming him up for my appearance."
"It may help anyway. Hilda, can you hang to one side and let us get past you for our big entrance?"
There was some rearranging in the dark, and Napoleon was thankful for the fact that the belt was only on about a 30° slant rather than vertical. Such maneuvering would have been practically impossible.
Then the belt leveled off and they paused. Illya inched ahead and looked out into the light, then crept back.
"This looks ridiculously easy," he said. "There's a helicopter out there—with huge blades, no doubt so it can fly silently—and only about a dozen men around it. We have carried the day."
"It looks to me," said Zoltan doubtfully, "as though we may have some work still to do."
Illya shook his head, and pulled his transceiver out of the recesses of his helmet. He extended the aerial and spoke softly. "Channel L, please....Hello, there. We are ready—make your drop in the courtyard of the castle. We'll be waiting." The little metal tube whispered an answer, and Illya folded the antenna.
"That's all there is to it," he said. "As soon as I found out Thrush was involved—this morning, while you were lying slugabed, Napoleon—I sent off to Bucharest for a small assault force. When you were captured I radioed and found them just at Pokol, awaiting only specific directions on where to attack. They should be here in fifteen minutes. Thrush does not have an exclusive copyright on the use of helicopters."
Chapter 16: "He's Lying, Of Course."
After a few minutes there were voices out in the courtyard, shouting back and forth to each other:
"No sign of them below—have you seen anything up here?"
"Nothing. How's the power coming?"
"Be restored in another minute. Make sure no lights are where they can be seen—we tried a lot of switches, and some of them might have been left on."
"All lights are covered—go ahead."
There was a few seconds' pause, and then suddenly the conveyor belt began to shake, and lights sprang on ahead of them. And then the belt was moving.
Napoleon had just time to draw his automatic before he was carried out into the icy night air and dumped unceremoniously on top of Illya, who was already sprawled on snow-dusted stones at the end of the belt. They managed to scramble out of the way before Hilda was catapulted, kicking, to the floor, closely followed by Zoltan, who managed to land on his feet.
Before he landed, however, there was a shout from a guard and a bullet screamed off into space from the stone near them. Napoleon and Illya each grabbed an arm and carried Hilda backwards between them to a place of cover behind the conveyor belt, which had just ground to a stop again. Zoltan leaped to join them a moment later, slugs yapping at his heels.
"They're only being foolish," said Napoleon. "After all, we have them at our mercy."
"Perhaps we should tell them so," said Illya. "Why don't you just stand up and order them to surrender?"
Napoleon declined to answer.
Soon the gunshots stopped from the courtyard except for an occasional slug which spattered off the wall above them. One showered them with particles of metal and stone, but none came close enough to cause any damage.
"They're trying to hold us down," said Illya. "They're probably working their way around us at this moment. I think we had better relocate before they move in, and the property values suddenly go down."
The nearest cover was a pile of crates a good twenty feet away. Napoleon looked at his partner "Feel like being a running target?"
"Not especially, but I prefer it to being a sitting one. Can you give me cover?"
"No trouble." Napoleon stuck his gun hand and sighting eye around the end of the conveyor and fired in the general direction of their sniper. An instant later Illya was off and running, his figure crouched low in the dimness. There was a shout from across the yard, and a spotlight swung towards them. Napoleon smiled and shook his head as he leaned out once again and let off three quick slugs at the light. There was a shattering of glass and the spot was gone. He ducked back and fished out his transceiver.
"Illya? You okay?"
"Just fine. Come on the over when you get a chance—there's a regular warren behind these crates. We can hide out here for hours."
"Sounds like a nice place to wait for our reinforcements. Give us about thirty seconds to get ready, and then put up some covering fire." He closed the transceiver, and crawled over to where Hilda lay up against Zoltan, his arms around her protectively.
"I hate to disturb you when you've just gotten comfortable," he said, "but there's a much nicer place just next door, and this place may be flooded out any moment now."
"What do you mean?" Hilda started to ask as she sat up, but she was interrupted by the scraping of a footstep on the other side of the conveyor. Napoleon sprang to his feet, forgetting the cover, and fired almost point-blank at an unprepared Thrush soldier no more than five feet away. He had three more slugs in three more men before their weapons were ready, his U.N.C.L.E. Special leaping in his fist as fast as he could swing it and pull the trigger.
He ducked down again as a hail of lead shattered the stonework behind where he had been standing. "Don't look now," he said, "but we're being invaded. Get out there and run as if a real vampire were after you. I'll be right behind you, and if you don't move fast you'll be stepped on. Now move!"
They moved. Bullets sang around them, but none struck home, and after a few seconds which seemed like five minutes they dropped into a crouch behind the first pile of packing crates.
Hilda looked around nervously. "How safe are we here?"
"Not very," said Napoleon casually. "The boxes are only thin wood and cardboard. All they do is give us more hiding places. If they really wanted to get rid of us enough to use a machine gun, they could stitch the whole area full of holes in a matter of a few seconds, ruining a lot of perfectly good boxes in the process. If they start that, all we can do is lie very close to the ground and cross our fingers. But for the time being..."